[1] After initially making good returns for investors, the CLR suffered a decline in passenger numbers due to increased competition from other underground railway lines and new motorised buses.

[7] This time the bill was approved by both Houses of Parliament and received royal assent on 5 August 1891 as the Central London Railway Act 1891 (54 & 55 Vict.

[11] The money to build the CLR was obtained through a syndicate of financiers including Ernest Cassel, Henry Oppenheim, Darius Ogden Mills, and members of the Rothschild family.

[14] When the syndicate offered 285,000 CLR company shares for sale at £10 each in June 1895,[14] only 14 per cent was bought by the British public, which was cautious of such investments following failures of similar railway schemes.

Like most legislation of its kind, the Central London Railway Act 1891 imposed a time limit for the compulsory purchase of land and the raising of capital.

[20] For Bank station, the CLR negotiated permission with the City Corporation to construct its ticket hall beneath a steel framework under the roadway and pavements at the junction of Threadneedle Street and Cornhill.

Twenty-eight locomotives were manufactured in America by the General Electric Company (of which syndicate member Darius Ogden Mills was a director) and assembled in the Wood Lane depot.

[33][note 6] The CLR had originally intended to have two classes of travel, but dropped the plan before opening, although its carriages were built with different qualities of interior fittings for this purpose.

The lighter locomotives did reduce the vibrations felt at the surface, but the multiple units removed it almost completely and the CLR chose to adopt that solution.

The CLR bill was one of many presented for the 1902 parliamentary session (including several for the Hammersmith to City route) and it was examined by another joint committee under Lord Windsor.

The Windsor committee rejected the section between Shepherd's Bush and Bank, preferring a competing route from the J. P. Morgan-backed Piccadilly, City and North East London Railway (PC&NELR).

[48] Without the main part of its new route, the CLR withdrew the City loop, leaving a few improvements to the existing line to be approved in the Central London Railway Act 1902 (2 Edw.

The line was then to run on an embankment south of Old Oak Common and Wormwood Scrubs before connecting to the WLR a short distance to the north of the CLR's depot.

To make a connection to the E&SBR, the CLR obtained parliamentary permission for a short extension northward from Wood Lane station on 18 August 1911 in the Central London Railway Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo.

Ealing Broadway station was modified to provide additional platforms for CLR use between the existing but separate sets of platforms used by the GWR and the DR.[63] To provide services over the 6.97-kilometre (4.33 mi) extension, the CLR ordered 24 additional driving motor carriages from the Brush Company, which, when delivered in 1917, were first borrowed by the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway for use in place of carriages ordered for its extension to Watford Junction.

The new carriages were the first for tube-sized trains that were fully enclosed, without gated platforms at the rear, and were provided with hinged doors in the sides to speed-up passenger loading times.

[66] The E&SBR remained part of the GWR until nationalisation at the beginning of 1948, when (with the exception of Ealing Broadway station) it was transferred to the London Transport Executive.

The route then was to head west again to continue under Chiswick High Road before coming to the surface east of the London and South Western Railway's (L&SWR's) Gunnersbury station.

Here a connection would be made to allow the CLR's tube trains to run south-west to Richmond station over L&SWR tracks that the DR shared and had electrified in 1905.

[note 12] The plan required electrification of the disused tracks, but avoided the need for costly tunnelling and would have shared the existing stations on the route with the DR.

The plan received assent on 4 August 1920 as part of the Central London and Metropolitan District Railways Companies (Works) Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo.

[74] From 1906 the CLR began to experience a large fall in passenger numbers[note 13] caused by increased competition from the DR and the MR, which electrified the Inner Circle in 1905, and from the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (GNP&BR) which opened its rival route to Hammersmith in 1906.

[78] The problem of declining revenues was not limited to the CLR; all of London's tube lines and the sub-surface DR and MR were affected by competition to some degree.

[28] They were built to serve residential and industrial developments around Park Royal and, like East Acton, the station buildings were basic structures with simple timber shelters on the platforms.

[86] The addition of doors in the sides of cars caused problems at Wood Lane where the length of the platform on the inside of the returning curve was limited by an adjacent access track into the depot.

Ashfield aimed for regulation that would give the UERL group protection from competition and allow it to take substantive control of the LCC's tram system; Morrison preferred full public ownership.

[91][note 18] In 1935 the LPTB announced plans as part of its New Works Programme to extend the CLR at both ends by taking over and electrifying local routes owned by the GWR in Middlesex and Buckinghamshire and by the LNER in east London and Essex.

The eastern extension from Liverpool Street to Stratford, Leyton and Newbury Park and the connection to the LNER lines to Hainault, Epping and Ongar were intended to open in 1940 and 1941.

[93] World War II caused works on both extensions to be halted and London Underground services were extended in stages from 1946 to 1949,[28] although the final section from West Ruislip to Denham was cancelled.

[1] During World War II, 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) of completed tube tunnels built for the eastern extension between Gants Hill and Redbridge were used as a factory by Plessey to manufacture electronic parts for aircraft.